Courtesy of Tampa Bay Online, written by Martin Fennelly
You probably haven't gobbled up tickets to Saturday's East-West Shrine Game at Tropicana Field. There are plenty of seats there for the gobbling.
College football all-star games aren't much to see unless you're a kid with an NFL dream in your head or a scout with a stopwatch in your hand. This will be the 87th East-West game. It's tryout time. It's business.
That's not the biggest reason why it matters.
"Let me tell you something," said BJ Coleman, a quarterback from Tennessee-Chattanooga who'll play for the East on Saturday. "We dream NFL dreams. But these kids right here — they're my heroes."
On Sunday, buses pulled up to the Shriners Hospital on the USF campus in Tampa. East-West players rumbled off. The children were waiting. This had nothing to do with mock drafts — it was the real deal.
This game raises money for hospitals that never stop giving. For a couple of hours, big, strong young men played with small, strong fighters in wheelchairs, in body casts and all the others trying to beat their own kind of odds.
What does anyone know about the East-West Shrine game? Probably as much as they know about Shriners International, the 140-year-old non-profit fraternal order that to most means those funny hats, tiny cars, oh, and that charity football game we never watch.
The Shriners opened their first children's hospital in 1922. There are now 22 hospitals in the Shriners system, including the one in Tampa, which is also home to Shriners International world headquarters. These hospitals have treated hundreds of thousands of children, specializing in orthopedics, spinal injuries and conditions, burn treatment and other services — regardless of a family's ability to pay.
"We try to make dreams come true," said Richard Leger, potentate of the Egypt Shrine, Tampa's Shriners chapter.
Potentate means he's the head cheese. Leger loves his fez, loves his pint-sized parade car — and worships East-West Shrine week. "I love seeing these players be with these children … they leave with tears in their eyes and smiles in their hearts."
"Strong Legs Run That Weak Legs Might Walk." That's the East-West motto.
When strong legs met weak legs Sunday at the hospital, it turned into a party. A mammoth offensive lineman boosted a girl onto a jungle gym, but she decided the lineman was a better jungle gym and climbed back onto him. Football players had their faces painted by kids, extra glitter.
Former Florida quarterback John Brantley will play for the East. He has his work cut out for him. After a rough senior season with the Gators, Brantley has a sea of doubters. "These children, they can show us the way," Brantley said.
Meet Ben Carpenter, a 16-year-old from Brandon who is at the top of my draft board when it comes to points of light. Ben and the Shriners Hospital are old friends. To Ben, the Shriners have always been there for him and his family, always been about hope. As a child, Ben was diagnosed with spinal muscle atrophy, degenerative, unstoppable. He uses a power wheelchair. Last year, he was an East-West game ambassador.
Ben once had doubters. The doctors said he wouldn't live to his first birthday. Then they said he wouldn't live to his second birthday. And so on.
Ben is a junior at King High School, where he gets straight A's (he always has) in the IB program. He wants to be a mechanical engineer and design theme park roller coasters. One thing Ben loves about them: "Everyone is the same on a coaster."
Ben's nonprofit is called Ben's Mends. It helps restore damaged books and donates them to nonprofits that support the elderly, children and women.
By the way, Ben is also captain on a power wheelchair team. "We're ranked third in the nation," he said. He plays midfielder.
Former South Florida players Jerrell Young and Jeremiah Warren, now East teammates and NFL long shots, were standing on the hospital basketball court, children all around.
"There are so many things we take for granted in life," Young said.
"These kids lift you up," Warren said.
We're all on the same coaster.
